by Martin Odoni

I know numbers alone cannot decide what is right and wrong, but when over ninety-nine per cent appear to be on one side of an issue and less than one per cent appear to be on the other, it is surely reasonable to go with the ninety-nine per cent.

I was in London again on Easter Saturday to take part in the demonstration marking the Anniversary of Land Day. For the most part it was a smooth march through the heart of London from Holborn to Trafalgar Square.

But on the Strand, we encountered an unexpected counter-demonstration by a group of Zionists. They had been positioned by the Metropolitan Police on a side road behind a double line of barricades to keep any danger of fighting to a minimum.

Let me take you by the hand and lead through the streets of London… and meet hardly any Zionists whatsoever.

But as the Save Gaza demonstrators trundled past, it seems the Zionists could not keep their heads. A number of them forced their way past the first line of barricades so they could hurl abuse our way from a closer-in position, making them more difficult to ignore. Police and stewards stopped them from actually breaking the second line of barricades, and thus from entering the pro-Palestine march itself.

It soon became embarrassingly clear though that this police action did the Zionists a favour more than anything else. I get the feeling that the Zionists had not realised when penetrating the first barricade just how many opponents they were facing.

To make this clear; there were, at a generous estimate, about sixty Zionists in the counter-demo.

When I and the group I was marching in reached Trafalgar Square for the closing demo, there were somewhere in the region of one hundred and fifty thousand pro-Gaza demonstrators there, and news was coming through from back at the starting point on Russell Square that many demonstrators who had been queuing patiently for several hours were still only just getting under way; about an hour after we had arrived, the estimated turn-out for the pro-Gaza demonstration had now been revised upwards to over two hundred thousand.

You cannot compete with this, Zionists. No, not because of racism. The racism is on your side, because you believe in an obsolete notion of a “Chosen race” and thus of Jews being innately superior to Arabs.
The Arabs are the ones being tormented beyond reason, therefore all human instinct for sympathy and kindness sides with them.

Sometimes, turning out for a counter-demonstration only serves to damage your side’s credibility. Sixty Zionists turning out to counter two hundred thousand Gaza supporters was undoubtedly one of those moments. Watch this, and listen to the laughter of the companion to the person filming. It genuinely is that funny when it becomes clear how shallow the counter-demo really is; –

Zionists, you and the media often pull tricks to make yourselves look like you have numbers on your side, but let’s face it, there is no disguising this one. You look like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid about to take on the Bolivian Army.

The Zionist ‘phalanx’ does not even go back four rows!

This footage showing how astronomically lopsided the numbers are was released on TikTok within minutes of the demo ending, and it makes the Zionists look hilariously isolated and insignificant. Even rather crankish and unrealistic.

What does this say when compared with a pro-Israel rally on the same site in January that barely half-filled Trafalgar Square? What does it say of the ridiculous over-exposure of pro-Israel voices in the media over the last eight years? Or of Keir Starmer’s position of being “a Zionist without qualification”? How in touch with the masses can he be?

Equally it is a massive gift to Zionist’ opponents, who, seeing how slight in number their enemies are, will be only more emboldened to keep heaping public pressure onto a UK Government that is already faltering in its previous ‘blank cheque’ support for Israel. Blank cheque support that suffered a massive blow only this week when Elbit Systems, a major Israel weapons supplier, was forced to shut down yet another of its factories, this time in Tamworth, due to months of unrelenting direct action by Palestine sympathisers.

Let us be in no doubt about this; the Palestine supporters in the UK are winning both the struggle and the moral and intellectual argument – and appear to be doing so globally as well. Not only are their peaceful protests huge, impactful and impossible to ignore (especially in an Election year), but also their direct action is seriously hurting Israeli supplies of arms. For all of the desperate horrors the Palestinians are enduring, the attempted genocide by Israel is also not going as planned.

In spite of how critical the situation is in Gaza, there remains very real hope for its people. They are not alone, and so long as they keep remembering that, they can survive and be saved.